Field of Chaos

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Field of Chaos is a compilation of two novella works written by Tom Barbalet in 1993. The first novella deals with a fictionalized account of Barbalet's experiences writing anti computer virus software for the Australian government. This anti-viral software was the basis of Barbalet's Noble Ape cognitive simulation. [1] The second novella is a non-fiction account of Barbalet's experiences in a revolutionary commune in Elands in northern New South Wales.

Novella written, fictional, prose narrative normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel

A novella is a text of written, fictional, narrative prose normally longer than a short story but shorter than a novel, somewhere between 17,500 and 40,000 words.

Tom Barbalet is the creator of Noble Ape, editor of Biota.org and chair of the IGDA Intellectual Property Rights SIG.

A computer virus is a type of malicious software that, when executed, replicates itself by modifying other computer programs and inserting its own code. When this replication succeeds, the affected areas are then said to be "infected" with a computer virus.

Contents

Field of Chaos

Field of Chaos is both the name of the final published work but also the name of the 1993 novella that detailed Barbalet's experiences writing anti-viral software. The novella was written in five different accounts. [2] The one published represents the fourth account. The novella originally started as a non-fiction novel of some length however through the explicit descriptions of a number of local hacking figures, including a young Julian Assange, the novel was re-written as a fictionalized novella to avoid any legal issues. [3]

The non-fiction novel is a literary genre which, broadly speaking, depicts real historical figures and actual events woven together with fictitious conversations and uses the storytelling techniques of fiction. The non-fiction novel is an otherwise loosely defined and flexible genre. The genre is sometimes referred to using the slang term "faction", a portmanteau of the words fact and fiction.

Julian Assange Australian editor, activist, publisher and journalist

Julian Paul Assange is an Australian journalist, computer programmer and the founder and director of WikiLeaks. Assange describes himself as an advocate of information transparency and market libertarianism. In 2006, he founded WikiLeaks, an international publishing organisation known for revealing war crimes, human rights abuses, and corruption. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Collateral Murder video, the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, and CableGate. After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and asked allied nations for assistance.

Field of Chaos is set in a fictional country called Debauturia, referred to by the teenage participants in the novella as the Created Nation. Much of the mythology through the novella is based on conspiracist views including the Hoover deity loosely based on J. Edgar Hoover. The conspiracist mythology used in Field of Chaos is still prevalent in the terminology used by Assange.

J. Edgar Hoover American law enforcement officer and first director of the FBI

John Edgar Hoover was the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States and an American law enforcement administrator. He was appointed as the director of the Bureau of Investigation – the FBI's predecessor – in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director for another 37 years until his death in 1972 at the age of 77. Hoover has been credited with building the FBI into a larger crime-fighting agency than it was at its inception and with instituting a number of modernizations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.

The novella starts with the lead character, Andrew, discovering a series of computer viruses that link the government with a violent gang of hackers. This connection exposes a series of interactions that put Andrew's life in danger while he also deals with the constant harassment of the government. The novella explores teenage identity issues in the context of the dark and looming fate that Andrew finds himself dealing with until the novella's conclusion.

Main Characters

Andrew - the lead character, loosely based on Barbalet, is a young anti-viral author and high school student

Marc - his feral friend

Tristan - a government employee who hires Andrew to cure some computer viruses

Nathan - the leader of a secretive government organization

Just Call Me Jesus

The second novella in Field of Chaos is a non-fiction account of Barbalet and his friend Gordon traveling to Elands in northern New South Wales during the period of the Wingham Forest Action (WFA) blockade. [4] Although the blockade is an incidental component of the novella, the story revolves around Barbalet's interaction with Kingston, a coming-of-age resident of Elands who is bent on forming a revolutionary army in the vision of Field of Chaos. Barbalet must survive and understand his writing as a work of fiction that may motivate strong reactions.

Main Characters

Tom - the author

Gordon - used as the basis of the Marc character in Field of Chaos

Kingston - an Elands local and the revolutionary leader

Forrest - Kingston's brother

Additional Information

Although Field of Chaos was written in 1993, it was copyrighted in 2010 and published in 2011. Barbalet provided a continued description of moving the writing from a series of text files into a published form through the Stone Ape podcasts in 2010. One of the running themes through the discussion of Field of Chaos is whether Julian Assange is a character in the writing. Although Barbalet initially denied the possibility, [5] an account of hackers targeting a child pornography internet ring and supplying this information to police (which features briefly in Field of Chaos) appears to have included Assange. [6]

Elands is a controversial location that has been written about extensively in recent years [7] due to the diversity of engineered communes developed around different alternative philosophies there. [8]

Barbalet has indicated he will publish the sequels to the book in the next few years.

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References

  1. ↑ Barbalet, Tom. "Biota Podcast, This is Your Brain on Agar" . Retrieved 2011-03-17.
  2. ↑ Reinhart, Jonathan J. "CWF GameCast, Totalcon and Bay Area Travels" . Retrieved 2011-03-17.
  3. ↑ Stone, Heron. "Stone Ape, Heron has a Posse" . Retrieved 2011-03-17.
  4. ↑ Wales, Penelope. "Account of the WFA blockade" . Retrieved 2011-03-17.
  5. ↑ Stone, Heron. "Stone Ape, Fate" . Retrieved 2011-03-17.
  6. ↑ Butcher, Steve (2011-02-12). "Assange helped our police catch child pornographers". The Age. Melbourne. Retrieved 2011-03-17.
  7. ↑ Scobie, Claire. "Children of Hippies (Sunday Life)" (PDF). Retrieved 2011-03-17.
  8. ↑ Dunstan, Jane. "Social Developers Network, Susanna Vall's Story 1982-2005" . Retrieved 2011-03-17.
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